Taoyuan Nights

I recently found out I have genetic hypercholesterolaemia. This means that my body makes too much LDL (bad) cholesterol; my blood chemistry would make you think I was eating 8 McDonald’s burgers every day. Kind of annoying, in a ‘first heart attack in your 30s’ sort of way. I’ll write more about LDL later.

Anyway, this discovery has posed a significant problem for me, as it means I have had to radically alter an already quite healthy diet, to try and make it super-healthy. I’ve had to add in even more exercise into my life.

Fortunately, I struck gold while alchemically combining various foods, and found a wonderful snack that fills you up, tastes great, and is super-healthy. I’m fairly sure no one will have thought of combining British, Italian and Korean cuisine before in quite this way, so here goes.

First, you take a piece of wholemeal bread, the staple of a British diet. Eaten by itself, it is only very modestly healthy (particularly with the sugar they add to bakery products here), and it is certainly not very tasty.

Second, toast the bread. This increases the tastyness by giving it a bit of texture, but does not add anything to the healthiness or ability to fill you up.

Third, get a bottle of ‘extra virgin’ olive oil. ‘Extra virgin’ basically means ‘taken from the first squeeze of the olives’ and tends to be more nicely flavoured than normal olive oil, and also subject to no chemical refinement or processing. Don’t be mislead by labels such as ‘PURE olive oil’ or ‘100% natural olive oil’. Only the words ‘extra virgin’ have a special meaning, and even that might not be worth much outside of Italy.

Fourth, pour the olive oil all over your toast. Why? Four reasons. First of all, we’re going to be adding something in a second which will need that oil. Secondly, it tastes great. Thirdly, olive oil drops your LDL (bad) cholesterol, since it’s a monounsaturated fat. Finally, there’s no way you are going to be snacking on crap food during the day, since this tasty combination will leak calories into your bloodstream all day long.

Fifth, and most excitingly, get a small tub of low-fat korean kimchi. You will have bought this before you make the toast, to avoid any ‘lack of kimchi’ problems at this crucial stage. Kimchi is basically just watery lettuce and chilli. It’s healthy and tasty, but sometimes hard to match with western dishes due to the sheer amount of chilli that decent Kimchi contains. Now, we’re going to put it on the toast. Your immediate reaction to this should be ‘DEAR GOD, MAN, NO!’, because putting watery stuff on toast creates a very unpleasant mush. A most untasty kind of mush, in fact, which you would not feed even to someone you hate.

But wait! Something is happening! The watery-chilli goodness is rolling off the lettuce and somehow floating on top of the toast! That’s right – by allowing the oil to sink into the toast, you’ve imbued it with magical anti-mush properties, since oil and water are not exactly the best of friends. So, now, pick up your toast and eat it, being careful not to allow the kimchi chilli to slide off onto your hands.

And there you have it: Ambrosia Mu’s Kimchi Olive Oil Toast – food of the gods!